


Claire Hargreeves

by kitty_pryde_bi_pride



Series: Umbrella Academy Vignettes [4]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25974391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitty_pryde_bi_pride/pseuds/kitty_pryde_bi_pride
Summary: Claire Hargreeves grows up confused.
Series: Umbrella Academy Vignettes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876861
Comments: 2
Kudos: 53





	Claire Hargreeves

Claire Hargreeves grows up confused.

No, that’s not quite right: she grows up entirely sure of herself, her childhood confidence never quite failing and growing as her own reputation grew alongside it.

Her mother taught her from a young age that words matter. Every interaction, every conversation and overheard whisper she witnesses means something, even if it’s not clear at first. Her own words become carefully chosen: a weapon to wield against her enemies, a glowing defense of a friend, a noncommittal omission to protect herself.

As time goes on, her understanding of these lessons grows with her. 

When her mother brings her to an interview junket to promote her newest movie, Claire silences herself and smiles prettily, laughing when she’s meant to and speaking out in unabashed support of her mother’s work, even if she’s never seen it. 

When she’s at school and the other girls talk behind her back about her parent’s fame, their money and her mother’s history, she doesn’t get angry; she gets even by spreading gossip of her own and inviting them to fun things with her, like birthday parties in her lavish home or extravagant outings where her parents book out entire theaters or parks for them.

When her parents get divorced and her father takes her to an interview with a tabloid magazine that she knows her mother would have torn to pieces, Claire smiles and poses for their cover image, saying that she loves her father but refusing to say a word about her own mother.

So, no: Claire Hargreeves is rarely confused about who she is or what the world is. It’s her own family that seems confused.

She’s young when her mother leaves, old enough to understand what a divorce and no visitation rights mean but young nonetheless, and her father sets her up with a counselor the moment the proceedings are over.

They meet, and the nice lady asks her what she thought of her mother, what she’s heard about the divorce, and Claire responds with what she knows best: a carefully crafted, middle-grounded, inoffensive lie.

This nice lady leans forward and – with a bit of steel, she thinks her mother would’ve liked this woman in a different circumstance – says no, the truth.

And what is the truth, to a girl whose life has been built on a master’s teaching to a prodigy in the art of diplomacy? 

She knows what they called her mother: The Rumor, the lady who could change anything, could change any person to be anything she wanted so deeply, so intrinsically that they wouldn’t even know they had once been different. Her mother’s words – and, by extension, her own words that have been taught to cut and protect and dismiss – are reality, and therefore must be the truth.

The lady frowns and asks if her mother can change reality so irrevocably and irreparably, how can Claire know who she herself is? She laughs and answers that her mother would never do that, but this lady who doesn’t seem very nice anymore tells her there’s no way to know- after all, her mother had used the power on her before to help her go to bed. Was it that much of a stretch that she could’ve gone in, changed the parts of Claire that didn’t mesh with herself, and erased all the evidence?

Claire goes home and tells her father she doesn’t want to see this lady anymore. That should be the end of it.

But that night, she lays in her bed and thinks. 

Everyone always used to tell her she was just like her mother: same face, same smile, same biting wit.

How much of her life can she confidently know is real?

Outwardly, she smiles and ignores these thoughts- her mother would’ve been disappointed to see her show an obvious weakness like this, so she covers them up.

Inwardly, she wonders at what point did her mother decide to remake her into a better image?

Claire Hargreeves doesn’t grow up confused: she knows what she is. She does, however, grow up knowing she has never been a real person. She thinks that might’ve been worse.

**Author's Note:**

> this is where we really get into some straight up headcanons that are not at all based in actual canon lmao
> 
> let me know what you think- i totally think claire and patrick have got to have some existential dread about allison, once they realized she had been willing to use her power on them
> 
> plz comment and leave kudos! it really means the world :) and have a lovely day


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